I’m not writing as much about Amazon Web Services as I once did – not because they are less interesting, but because they are so successful and well covered. Still, one thing that did catch my eye recently is the new import/export feature, now in beta. The idea seems contrary at first: deliver or export data from your Amazon internet storage using the latest variant of sneakernet – copy stuff to a drive, and take it physically to the destination.
The thing is, copying data over the Internet is relatively slow and expensive. Once the volume of data gets beyond a certain point, it is cheaper to transport a hard drive. I remember Sun telling me the same thing in relation to its data centers: for large volumes of data, the most cost effective way to shift it is on a truck.
Amazon’s system is not normally on that scale, but it is the same principle: you send them a portable hard drive. There’s even a handy chart explaining how much data you need for this to be worth doing:
| Available Internet Connection | Theoretical Min. Number of Days to Transfer 1TB at 80% Network Utilization | When to Consider AWS Import/Export? |
|---|---|---|
| T1 (1.544Mbps) | 82 days | 100GB or more |
| 10Mbps | 13 days | 600GB or more |
| T3 (44.736Mbps) | 3 days | 2TB or more |
| 100Mbps | 1 to 2 days | 5TB or more |
| 1000Mbps | Less than 1 day | 60TB or more |
The cost? $80 per storage device, plus $2.49 per data-loading hour.
Many home and small business users have ADSL with a maximum upload speed of 1Mb – slower than anything considered on the chart above. If you have a large database or media collection to put on S3, sneakernet soon makes sense.
Related posts:
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud gets persistent storage
- MySQL comes to Amazon’s cloud. Anyone for Quadruple Extra Large?
- Amazon fails to address interoperability concerns; Flexiscale plans cloud platform
- Cloud Computing survey: more fog than cloud
- Amazon’s cloud computing to surpass its retailing business?
Compare that to this article: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/carrier-pigeon-faster-than-south-african-isp-20090910-fi9h.html
I’m pretty sure you’d get the same test results here in Australia. It’d be quicker and cheaper to send 8GB via pigeon (with memory stick) 100km away than it would to send it via the internet.
I am wondering how many falcon nesting sites will become increasingly littered with USB sticks in the coming years…